RIP: Napster

Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology has emerged as the biggest innovation to hit the high-tech community: the Network is the Computer.

just another acronym?

P2P technology will deliver the full potential of the Internet; a researcher in California can store studies that doctors in South Africa can access, examine and update — ultimately spawning innovation and accelerating technological breakthroughs.

This altruistic side of the technology has received less mainstream coverage because it is less glamorous and commercially viable in the short term than billion dollar-generating recording and movie industries, and the ensuing lawsuits and allegations. For this reason, regulators must tread carefully because too many restrictions on data sharing could prevent rapid adoption and development of the innovative information exchanging architecture.

first to market

When the Internet was in its infancy (consider it now in its toddler days), many foresaw that music could be sent over Internet pipes just like word files. The challenge was quality, connection speeds and legal issues.

The music industry was growing increasingly paranoid that its inability to standardize the online digitization and distribution of music would render it obsolete at a time when children and teenagers were increasingly turning off their TV sets, in favor of their desktops and their window to the World Wide Web.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) should have blitzed to develop some technology standard that would have enabled it to sell and distribute music through its websites. Songs were stored on its websites with thousands of users trying to download the file at once, slowing down the process and frustrating users. The prospect of faster and more powerful computers is great for chip and computer makers, but it does very little for the RIAA.

The RIAA's reasoning was partially correct: content is King after all and music would increase the stickiness of its websites. But, as always, the industry was cocky and felt that nothing could shift its power. Failing to agree on a standard, it has been sideswiped as consumers were seeking a digital alternative.

first to scale

Along came Shawn Fanning, who developed software that allowed users to swap songs for free with users from around the world. To some musicians, the notion that music could now reach worldwide users, up to 70 million currently, without the complex logistics required for traditional distribution, represented a godsend. True, musicians' short-term sales would suffer, but the potential to go to emerging countries (computers and high speed connections notwithstanding...) and play in front of a global audience could now become a reality for many more musicians.

cat's out of the bag

Napster removes content from the Web and provides a path to files stored on a peer's hard drive through a central directory; Gnutella extends this by eliminating centralized directories, linking hard drives directly. While Napster is a company that has been sued and forced to shut down, Gnutella is a technology: hard if not impossible to contain.